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Quite often my friends who are not really that internet savvy ask me what I do at work, I think back to the time in the first grade when my teacher Mrs. Hyde told me: “ Bill you’re going to be a great problem solver when you get older, your problem solving skills are already at a fourth grade level.” Now you’re probably reading this wondering how problem solving problems in the first grade have anything to do with my job. It is, as she told me, all about how you think. She told me I was an outside the box thinker.

My co-workers and I deal with a network of 20,000+ servers, and 5500+ customers, in over 110 different countries, and support over 15 different operating systems. That leads to an almost infinite combination of language, hardware, and software options. When our customers submit an issue for us to work on, it is always different than the time before – whether that is a ticket from the same customer or a ticket on a similar topic. We have a very diverse range of customers using our servers for a number of things, so not every server in here is doing the same thing. In order to be good at supporting our customers, SoftLayer’s management, in my opinion, has hired some of the best problem solvers around the world to address all of our customer issues. So that is what I am: I am a problem solver! Otherwise known as a Customer Systems Administrator. We’re required to know a broad range of technologies and have the passion to learn the new ones as they come along. I think that is why I chose to work in the field that I work in, it is always changing. I tried moving over to telecommunications engineering a few years ago, but got bored with is as it was the same issues day in and day out on the equipment. Working here at SoftLayer is wonderful as there is never a dull moment.

A few days ago I was reading a news story about a man who just lost everything to a fire. One of the comments he made was that he had never thought to plan for something like this; it was the type of thing that happened to other people but never to me. I started thinking about how true that statement was. Many people just never think it will happen to them.

This type of situation happens every day in the IT field. There is some sort of disaster causing a server to crash or simply stop working all together, the drives on the server are completely corrupted and the data is just gone. The question is; when this happens to you, will you be prepared? Thankfully, there are steps each person can take to limit the pain and downtime a situation like this can cause. Like any other disaster recovery plan, the more you are willing to put into it, the more protection you will have when disaster strikes.

This is where SoftLayer comes in. Here at SoftLayer we understand the importants of providing our customers the means to create a good disaster recovery plan that meets their needs. We understand that a detailed disaster recovery plan will include things such as backups and replication. Our services such as NAS and EVault are perfect solutions for performing and managing the backups for you server. When looking into replication, we offer services such as iSCSI replication, Raids, local and global loadbalancing which will provide our customer with the tools to replicate not only their data across multiple locations but their servers as well. Above all, we provide our private network to securely transfer this data to the many locations without impacting the traffic on your public network.

We can only hope that on the day disaster strikes, everyone has some plan in place to deal with it. There is nothing more frustrating in this industry then the loss of crucial data that in many instances cannot be recovered.p

Last weekend, I attended an event that indicates that Facebook has more staying power than those old CB radios. It was a quasi high school reunion. Since a lot of graduates of Brownwood High School (my alma mater) wind up in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area, a 2-3 hour drive away from Brownwood, we had a get-together in Grapevine, TX for Brownwood High grads living in the area.

At the event, the oldest grad I bumped into was from the Class of ’81 and the youngest I saw was from the Class of ’90. Yes, there’s a “19” in front of those graduation years, making the age range of people I saw between ages 37 and 46 years of age. I won’t disclose where I fit in that group, but in the world of Facebook, we’re all pretty much “geezers” I imagine.

I wish I had counted the number of times I heard Facebook mentioned at the party on Saturday night. Many times people told of who they had found on Facebook that couldn’t make it to the party. Some of the comments I overheard went like this:

“I saw those pictures of your kids on Facebook. Man they’ve grown!”

Q: “So, is that crawfish boil you posted on Facebook an annual event?”
A: “Yeah, it got kinda wild this year.”

“You said in your Facebook status a while back that your daughter got hurt. How’s she doing now?”

You get the drift, I’m sure. Most everybody there in this age range was active on Facebook and was already connected to several in attendance on Facebook. Since the event, I’ve received friend requests from folks I saw, and I’ve also sent out a few friend requests.

After we all made it home early Sunday morning (hey we’re not THAT old – at least we think we’re not), the Facebook fun continued. My email account pinged all day letting me know I’d been tagged in a photo here, someone commented on a photo there, etc. Yes the cameras were out Saturday night, and the contents of those cameras got uploaded, tagged, and commented upon all day Sunday. In fact, I was tagged in one photo that had the caption “Brownwood High School geezers from class of __.”

As far as Facebook goes, I’ll bet stories like this occur all over the country by the thousands. Provided that Facebook keeps its financial house in order, they’re here for the long haul I think.

So, what’s the connection to SoftLayer here? Easy. We have a lot of customers who provide apps on Facebook. The infrastructure for those apps is hosted at SoftLayer. Consequently, we’re big cheerleaders for Facebook and the apps that run upon it. Go go go!